Again it’s mostly the old-school images. Most of them where done with the Orgform formula collection, some were done with the fract_ml (I guess) collection which is a collection of formulas used in images submitted to the Fractint mailing list from what I could get.

I refused to try any enhancements on them using UltraFractal this time (but it doesn’t mean I won’t rework some of these images), and I’ve used UF just to render them in bigger sizes and to make them smoother because of the colour number limitations of Fractint, as usual.

There are some images that just don’t work, or it’s because of a certain parameter used in Fractint isn’t available in UF (like the “one” and some others like “cosxx”, usually replacing them with “cos” works) or because some of Fractint’s native colouring methods don’t work that well in UF (like the epsiloncross, and sometimes just replacing the outside/inside with the UF equivalent doesn’t work). Sometimes it’s just a matter of a small tweak, sometimes it doesn’t work at all no matter what you do.

Some images are entirely different when rendered in UF and are missing most of its main”theme” parts when they really don’t work, so I’ve decided to render these that can’t be fixed at all using Fractint. They had to be rendered in GIF, 256 colours, using disk render and 1600 x 1200 resolutions and later converted to JPEG. Unfortunately, if the original image had some imperfections like bandings, these can’t be fixed, but I guess most of them look fine as they are. Some of these imperfections even make them look more authentic and “vintage”.

I’ve named them using sort of a template, something like “OF-XX” where “OF” means “Orgform” and XX is the number of the image, or “OS-XX”, “OS” meaning “old school”. In specific images, I’ve used the “regular” naming, if they were really asking for a name. But as they are mostly abstract images, the template method works.

Enough talking, here we go:

PS. I didn’t edit the tags and details of these images yet, will do that later.

This is one of my favourite images. People tend to say it’s very “spiritual”, even though they don’t know its real name, which could really be suggestive. It was the first image I sent to the exhibition(s) in Spain, and it looked gorgeous printed in a big size and framed. It was my first experience of printing a fractal bigger than the more common and easy A4/A3 sizes, and I was really surprised. The bigger you print them, the more details appear, all the time. It happens to even some of the ugliest images, when they are seen printed in a big size and framed, they change.

I had a few problems with the brazilian mail service though. They charged me a very expensive fee to send it to Spain, and the glass of the frame came there broken (silly me, I used glass, should have tried something else). They said (obviously) that it wasn’t their fault, despite all the huge FRAGILE signs attached to the package. Since then whenever I need to send some of my fractals elsewhere I try to send it unframed and make all the framing job in the destination. It’s more expensive to do the framing in places like Europe or USA, but it’s safer. Framing them here is quite complicated, people aren’t used to frame this kind of work and I had a couple damaged prints, not to mention all the problems with the shipping – and I didn’t use the cheapest option!

Absolutely accidental. Serendipity is back. It started I guess with explorations of the image called “falco” and its “sub-images”, as the “falco” main theme still appears behind the “guitar”. I did a bunch of these (only one was posted though) with the same look and just changing the colouring algorithms but in some random colouring and zoom combination (a zoom out I guess, something people should try more often), this other image appeared*. I think no further tweaks were done other than maybe some positioning if any, but nothing in regard of the aspect of the “guitar” was changed. It seems to be a nice clone of the Frankenstrat after all.

It’s one of the images here that is most visited, because people seem to search for Eddie and this image appears in the results.

* Looking a bit more into the details, it seems that the “guitar” is a separate image from the “falco” pattern (although both might have came from the same formula), that seems to have been layered over the “guitar”, not behind it.

I was bored and started to look for fractal tutorials. And of course, I ended up at Deviant. Then I found this (sorry) hilarious tutorial for Apophysis.

Hopefully this person could have changed his/her mind about the process of creating a good fractal as it seems that this tutorial was written in 2005, but from what you can get from this tutorial, it’s all “random, random, random + luck” the ingredients you need to make a decent Apophysis image. Ah, and patience as well. Forget about understanding how to use the several edit features, just wait and maybe one of your 1000 randomly-generated images will be worth the posting at one of these sites.

While doing the fractal softwares tests I had the opportunity to try one software that was in my list of “I want to try this someday”, Mind-Boggling Fractals. I always liked its colourful images, but never could find even a demo of the software.

Apparently, the author gave up on its development and it is now available for free in that list of fractal softwares. It used to be shareware, and a very expensive one if I can remember, considering what it did. Maybe because you now can replicate most if not all of its effects with some colouring algorithms in UltraFractal (pwc.ucl and kcc3.ucl in UF 4 which is what I use) it was no longer interesting for it to be kept as a separate software.

Anyway, I tried it and I didn’t go too far, I just did 2 images (a relatively deep zoom in a simple Mandelbrot looking for a square midget) and gave up. I think with these 2 colouring methods of UF I can make much more interesting images in that style, if needed. Here are my attempts:

MB-Midget

MB Midget 02

It might make some interesting images, but with UltraFractal I have way more options, as in different formulas. With this specific software, I will be limited to a dozen or so kinds of fractals.